Moving right along

in more ways than one.
Have extended my treadmill walking time to 45 minutes at an average walking speed of 2.7 miles per hour. Today for the first time I can say that the minutes just flew by and I had to tell myself to stop and not push it. Of course Josh Grobin's "Awake" album might have had something to do with it. I love his voice and I like every cut on this album. I just kept listening, sweating and walking.

I soda ash soaked the piece with the windows for a second time yesterday and dye painted color the window panes today. Now I like the piece better, however, I am not completely happy with my stamping technique on this piece, but I keep telling myself that I can add some more "Blackness" with thread and or with fabric markers later. Then on the other hand a little less crispness of lines might be a good thing.

One good thing about doing your own ideas; only you can say it's not right. YET.

I sandwiched and began quilting "Winter No More" yesterday

I used Thiox to discharge the yellow rectangle yesterday and used thickened dye to imprint the five trees today. Again, not real happy with my stamping technique and will have to think about what to do with the red/black dye smudges in areas where I did not want them. Discharge more? ... hummmm?

No matter how much horizontal space you have you can always use more. Thus was my reason for setting up this 2' x 4' table and elevating it on bed risers to hold the containers of thicken dye and print paste.

It was another wonderful day to be outside in the garage with both doors not fully up. I have stretched another piece of cloth on the print surface and cut paper stencil to use with a silk screen. I will tackle that tomorrow while the two pieces on the line get cold water soaked then washed.

The good and the bad of working this way(whole cloth/ surface design based compositions) is that you can create some rather large size piece in short order/ Providing each piece comes out as planned you can have a stack of work on your hand fairly fast. On the other hand, you can also find yourself with a lot of work in need of quilting and not be in the mood to quilt.

Knowing myself, if I leave too many tops folded up and waiting on the shelf for too long whether I am pleased with them or not, I grow past them and they never become finished work. To possibly forestall this from happening; just as I promised myself a number of hours in the wet studio space, I have also promised myself that I will sit and quilt a while each day too.
We'll see how this routine and series of work fairs.